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Culture Documents
Amber is fossilized tree resin, which has been appreciated for its color
and natural beauty since Neolithic times.[2] Much valued from antiquity
to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative
objects.[3] Amber is used in jewelry. It has also been used as a healing
agent in folk medicine.
There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical
constituents. Because it originates as a soft, sticky tree resin, amber
sometimes contains animal and plant material as inclusions.[4] Amber
occurring in coal seams is also called resinite, and the term ambrite is Pendants made of amber. The oval
applied to that found specifically within New Zealand coal seams.[5] pendant is 52 by 32 mm (2.0 by 1.3 in).
Contents
1 Etymology
2 History
3 Composition and formation
3.1 Formation
3.2 Botanical origin
3.3 Inclusions
4 Extraction and processing
4.1 Distribution and mining
4.2 Treatment
5 Appearance
6 Classification
6.1 Class I
6.1.1 Ia
6.1.2 Ib
6.1.3 Ic
6.2 Class II
6.3 Class III An ant inside Baltic amber
6.4 Class IV
6.5 Class V
7 Geological record
7.1 Paleontological significance
8 Use
8.1 Jewelry
8.2 Historic medicinal uses
8.3 Scent of amber and amber perfumery
9 Imitation
9.1 Imitation made in natural resins
9.2 Imitations made of plastics
10 See also A mosquito in amber
11 References
12 Bibliography
13 External links
Etymology
The English word amber derives from Arabic ʿanbar [ﻋﻨﺒﺮ6] (cognate
The English word amber derives from Arabic ʿanbar [ﻋﻨﺒﺮ6] (cognate
with Middle Persian ambar[7]) via Middle Latin ambar and Middle
French ambre. The word was adopted in Middle English in the 14th
century as referring to what is now known as ambergris (ambre gris or
"grey amber"), a solid waxy substance derived from the sperm whale.
In the Romance languages, the sense of the word had come to be
extended to Baltic amber (fossil resin) from as early as the late 13th
century. At first called white or yellow amber (ambre jaune), this
meaning was adopted in English by the early 15th century. As the use
of ambergris waned, this became the main sense of the word.[6] The Amber Room was reconstructed
using new amber fromKaliningrad
The two substances ("yellow amber" and "grey amber") conceivably
became associated or confused because they both were found washed
up on beaches. Ambergris is less dense than water and floats, whereas
amber is too dense to float, though less dense than stone.[8]
The classical names for amber, Latin electrum and Ancient Greek
ἤλεκτρον (ēlektron), are connected to a term ἠλέκτωρ (ēlektōr)
meaning "beaming Sun".[9][10] According to myth, when Phaëton son
of Helios (the Sun) was killed, his mourning sisters became poplar
trees, and their tears became elektron, amber.[11]
Earlier[13] Pliny says that a large island of three days' sail from the
Scythian coast called Balcia by Xenophon of Lampsacus, author of a An amber violin bow frog, made by
fanciful travel book in Greek, is called Basilia by Pytheas. It is Keith Peck in 1996/97.[1]
generally understood to be the same as Abalus. Based on the amber, the
island could have been Heligoland, Zealand, the shores of Bay of
Gdansk, the Sambia Peninsula or the Curonian Lagoon, which were historically the richest sources of amber in
northern Europe. It is assumed that there were well-established trade routes for amber connecting the Baltic
with the Mediterranean (known as the "Amber Road"). Pliny states explicitly that the Germans export amber to
Pannonia, from where it was traded further abroad by the Veneti. The ancient Italic peoples of southern Italy
were working amber, the most important examples are on display at the National Archaeological Museum of
Siritide to Matera. Amber used in antiquity as at Mycenae and in the prehistory of the Mediterranean comes
from deposits of Sicily.
He also states that amber is also found in Egypt and in India, and he
even refers to the electrostatic properties of amber, by saying that "in
Syria the women make the whorls of their spindles of this substance,
and give it the name of harpax [from ἁρπάζω, "to drag"] from the Wood resin, the source of amber
circumstance that it attracts leaves towards it, chaff, and the light fringe
of tissues."
Pliny says that the German name of amber was glæsum, "for which
reason the Romans, when Germanicus Cæsar commanded the fleet in
those parts, gave to one of these islands the name of Glæsaria, which by
the barbarians was known as Austeravia". This is confirmed by the
recorded Old High German glas and Old English glær for "amber" (c.f.
glass). In Middle Low German, amber was known as berne-, barn-,
börnstēn. The Low German term became dominant also in High
German by the 18th century, thus modern German Bernstein besides
Extracting Baltic amber from Holocene
Dutch Dutch barnsteen.
deposits, Gdansk, Poland
The Baltic Lithuanian term for amber is gintaras and Latvian dzintars.
They, and the Slavic jantar or Hungarian gyanta ('resin'), are thought to
originate from Phoenician jainitar ("sea-resin").
Early in the nineteenth century, the first reports of amber from North America came from discoveries in New
Jersey along Crosswicks Creek near Trenton, at Camden, and near Woodbury.[3]
For this to happen, the resin must be resistant to decay. Many trees
produce resin, but in the majority of cases this deposit is broken down
by physical and biological processes. Exposure to sunlight, rain,
microorganisms (such as bacteria and fungi), and extreme temperatures Fishing for amber on the coast of Baltic
tends to disintegrate resin. For resin to survive long enough to become Sea. Winter storms throw out amber
amber, it must be resistant to such forces or be produced under nuggets. Close to Gdansk, Poland.
conditions that exclude them.[18]
Botanical origin
Fossil resins from Europe fall into two categories, the famous
Baltic ambers and another that resembles the Agathis group. Fossil
resins from the Americas and Africa are closely related to the
modern genus Hymenaea,[19] while Baltic ambers are thought to be
fossil resins from Sciadopityaceae family plants that used to live in
north Europe.[20]
Inclusions
Treatment
The Vienna amber factories, which use pale amber to manufacture pipes
and other smoking tools, turn it on a lathe and polish it with whitening
and water or with rotten stone and oil. The final luster is given by
friction with flannel.[22]
Blue amber from Dominican Republic
When gradually heated in an oil-bath, amber becomes soft and flexible.
Two pieces of amber may be united by smearing the surfaces with
linseed oil, heating them, and then pressing them together while hot. Cloudy amber may be clarified in an oil-
bath, as the oil fills the numerous pores to which the turbidity is due. Small fragments, formerly thrown away
or used only for varnish, are now used on a large scale in the formation of "ambroid" or "pressed amber".[22]
The pieces are carefully heated with exclusion of air and then compressed into a uniform mass by intense
hydraulic pressure, the softened amber being forced through holes in a metal plate. The product is extensively
used for the production of cheap jewelry and articles for smoking. This pressed amber yields brilliant
interference colors in polarized light. Amber has often been imitated by other resins like copal and kauri gum,
as well as by celluloid and even glass. Baltic amber is sometimes colored artificially, but also called "true
amber".[22]
Appearance
Amber occurs in a range of different colors. As well as the usual yellow-orange-brown that is associated with
the color "amber", amber itself can range from a whitish color through a pale lemon yellow, to brown and
almost black. Other uncommon colors include red amber (sometimes known as "cherry amber"), green amber,
and even blue amber, which is rare and highly sought after.[27]
Yellow amber is a hard, translucent, yellow, orange, or brown fossil resin from evergreen trees. Known to the
Iranians by the Pahlavi compound word kah-ruba (from kah "straw" plus rubay "attract, snatch", referring to its
electrical properties), which entered Arabic as kahraba' or kahraba (which later became the Arabic word for
electricity, ﻛﻬﺮﺑﺎءkahrabā'), it too was called amber in Europe (Old French and Middle English ambre). Found
along the southern shore of the Baltic Sea, yellow amber reached the Middle East and western Europe via trade.
Its coastal acquisition may have been one reason yellow amber came to be designated by the same term as
ambergris. Moreover, like ambergris, the resin could be burned as an incense. The resin's most popular use was,
however, for ornamentation—easily cut and polished, it could be transformed into beautiful jewelry. Much of
the most highly prized amber is transparent, in contrast to the very common cloudy amber and opaque amber.
Opaque amber contains numerous minute bubbles. This kind of amber is known as "bony amber".[28]
Although all Dominican amber is fluorescent, the rarest Dominican amber is blue amber. It turns blue in natural
sunlight and any other partially or wholly ultraviolet light source. In long-wave UV light it has a very strong
reflection, almost white. Only about 100 kg (220 lb) is found per year, which makes it valuable and
expensive.[29]
Sometimes amber retains the form of drops and stalactites, just as it exuded from the ducts and receptacles of
the injured trees.[22] It is thought that, in addition to exuding onto the surface of the tree, amber resin also
originally flowed into hollow cavities or cracks within trees, thereby leading to the development of large lumps
of amber of irregular form.
Classification
Amber can be classified into several forms. Most fundamentally, there are two types of plant resin with the
potential for fossilization. Terpenoids, produced by conifers and angiosperms, consist of ring structures formed
of isoprene (C5H8) units.[2] Phenolic resins are today only produced by angiosperms, and tend to serve
functional uses. The extinct medullosans produced a third type of resin, which is often found as amber within
their veins.[2] The composition of resins is highly variable; each species produces a unique blend of chemicals
which can be identified by the use of pyrolysis–gas chromatography–mass spectrometry.[2] The overall
chemical and structural composition is used to divide ambers into five classes.[30][31] There is also a separate
classification of amber gemstones, according to the way of production.
Class I
This class is by far the most abundant. It comprises labdatriene carboxylic acids such as communic or ozic
acids.[30] It is further split into three sub-classes. Classes Ia and Ib utilize regular labdanoid diterpenes (e.g.
communic acid, communol, biformenes), while Ic uses enantio labdanoids (ozic acid, ozol, enantio
biformenes).[32]
Ia
Includes Succinite (= 'normal' Baltic amber) and Glessite.[31] Have a communic acid base. They also include
much succinic acid.[30]
Baltic amber yields on dry distillation succinic acid, the proportion varying from about 3% to 8%, and being
greatest in the pale opaque or bony varieties. The aromatic and irritating fumes emitted by burning amber are
mainly due to this acid. Baltic amber is distinguished by its yield of succinic acid, hence the name succinite.
Succinite has a hardness between 2 and 3, which is rather greater than that of many other fossil resins. Its
specific gravity varies from 1.05 to 1.10.[15] It can be distinguished from other ambers via IR spectroscopy due
to a specific carbonyl absorption peak. IR spectroscopy can detect the relative age of an amber sample.
Succinic acid may not be an original component of amber, but rather a degradation product of abietic acid.[33]
Ib
Like class Ia ambers, these are based on communic acid; however, they lack succinic acid.[30]
Ic
This class is mainly based on enantio-labdatrienonic acids, such as ozic and zanzibaric acids.[30] Its most
familiar representative is Dominican amber.[2]
Dominican amber differentiates itself from Baltic amber by being mostly transparent and often containing a
higher number of fossil inclusions. This has enabled the detailed reconstruction of the ecosystem of a long-
vanished tropical forest.[34] Resin from the extinct species Hymenaea protera is the source of Dominican amber
and probably of most amber found in the tropics. It is not "succinite" but "retinite".[35]
and probably of most amber found in the tropics. It is not "succinite" but "retinite".[35]
Class II
These ambers are formed from resins with a sesquiterpenoid base, such as cadinene.[30]
Class III
Class IV
Class IV is something of a wastebasket; its ambers are not polymerized, but mainly consist of cedrene-based
sesquiterpenoids.[30]
Class V
Class V resins are considered to be produced by a pine or pine relative. They comprise a mixture of diterpinoid
resins and n-alkyl compounds. Their type mineral is highgate copalite.[31]
Geological record
The oldest amber recovered dates to the Upper Carboniferous period
(320 million years ago).[2][36] Its chemical composition makes it difficult
to match the amber to its producers – it is most similar to the resins
produced by flowering plants; however, there are no flowering plant fossils
until the Cretaceous, and they were not common until the Upper
Cretaceous. Amber becomes abundant long after the Carboniferous, in the
Early Cretaceous, 150 million years ago,[2] when it is found in association
with insects. The oldest amber with arthropod inclusions comes from the
Levant, from Lebanon and Jordan. This amber, roughly 125–135 million
years old, is considered of high scientific value, providing evidence of
some of the oldest sampled ecosystems.[37]
Baltic amber or succinite (historically documented as Prussian amber[15]) is found as irregular nodules in
marine glauconitic sand, known as blue earth, occurring in the Lower Oligocene strata of Sambia in Prussia (in
historical sources also referred to as Glaesaria).[15] After 1945, this territory around Königsberg was turned
into Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, where amber is now systematically mined.[39]
It appears, however, to have been partly derived from older Eocene deposits and it occurs also as a derivative
phase in later formations, such as glacial drift. Relics of an abundant flora occur as inclusions trapped within
the amber while the resin was yet fresh, suggesting relations with the flora of Eastern Asia and the southern
part of North America. Heinrich Göppert named the common amber-yielding pine of the Baltic forests Pinites
succiniter, but as the wood does not seem to differ from that of the existing genus it has been also called Pinus
succinifera. It is improbable, however, that the production of amber was limited to a single species; and indeed
a large number of conifers belonging to different genera are represented in the amber-flora.[22]
Paleontological significance
Amber is a unique preservational mode, preserving otherwise unfossilizable parts of organisms; as such it is
helpful in the reconstruction of ecosystems as well as organisms;[40] the chemical composition of the resin,
however, is of limited utility in reconstructing the phylogenetic affinity of the resin producer.[2]
Amber sometimes contains animals or plant matter that became caught in the resin as it was secreted. Insects,
spiders and even their webs, annelids, frogs,[41] crustaceans, bacteria and amoebae,[42] marine microfossils,[43]
wood, flowers and fruit, hair, feathers[4] and other small organisms have been recovered in Cretaceous ambers
(deposited c. 130 million years ago).[2] The oldest amber to bear fossils (mites) is from the Carnian (Triassic,
230 million years ago) of north-eastern Italy.[44]
Use
Amber has been used since prehistory (Solutrean) in the manufacture of
jewelry and ornaments, and also in folk medicine.
Jewelry
Amber has been used since the stone age, from 13,000 years ago.[2]
Amber ornaments have been found in Mycenaean tombs and elsewhere
across Europe.[45] To this day it is used in the manufacture of smoking
and glassblowing mouthpieces.[46][47] Amber's place in culture and
tradition lends it a tourism value; Palanga Amber Museum is dedicated
to the fossilized resin.
Solutrean of Altamira – MHNT
Amber has long been used in folk medicine for its purported healing properties.[48] Amber and extracts were
used from the time of Hippocrates in ancient Greece for a wide variety of treatments through the Middle Ages
and up until the early twentieth century.
The modern name for amber is thought to come from the Arabic word, ambar, meaning ambergris.[53][54]
The modern name for amber is thought to come from the Arabic word, ambar, meaning ambergris.[53][54]
Ambergris is the waxy aromatic substance created in the intestines of sperm whales and was used in making
perfumes both in ancient times as well as modern.
The scent of amber was originally derived from emulating the scent of ambergris and/or labdanum but due to
the endangered species status of the sperm whale the scent of amber is now largely derived from labdanum.[55]
The term “amber” is loosely used to describe a scent that is warm, musky, rich and honey-like, and also
somewhat oriental and earthy. It can be synthetically created or derived from natural resins. When derived from
natural resins it is most often created out of labdanum. Benzoin is usually part of the recipe. Vanilla and cloves
are sometimes used to enhance the aroma.
"Amber" perfumes may be created using combinations of labdanum, benzoin resin, copal (itself a type of tree
resin used in incense manufacture), vanilla, Dammara resin and/or synthetic materials.[49]
Imitation
Imitation made in natural r esins
Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rudler, Frederick William
(1911). "Amber". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University
Press. pp. 792–794.
Bibliography
Bogdasarov, Albert; Bogdasarov, Maksim (2013). "Forgery and simulations from amber" [Подделки и
имитация янтаря]. In Kostjashova, Z. V. Янтарь и его имитации Материалы международной
научно-практической конференции 27 июня 2013 года [Amber and its imitations] (in Russian).
Kaliningrad: Kaliningrad Amber Museum, Ministry of Culture (Kaliningrad region, Russia). p. 113.
ISBN 978-5-903920-26-6.
Matushevskaya, Aniela (2013). "Natural and artificial resins – chosen aspects of structure and
properties". In Kostjashova, Z. V. Янтарь и его имитации Материалы международной научно-
практической конференции 27 июня 2013 года [Amber and its imitations] (in Russian). Kaliningrad:
Kaliningrad Amber Museum, Ministry of Culture (Kaliningrad region, Russia). p. 113. ISBN 978-5-
903920-26-6.
Wagner-Wysiecka, Eva (2013). "Amber imitations through the eyes of a chemist" [Имитация янтаря
глазами химика]. In Kostjashova, Z. V. Янтарь и его имитации Материалы международной научно-
практической конференции 27 июня 2013 года [Amber and its imitations] (in Russian). Kaliningrad:
Kaliningrad Amber Museum, Ministry of Culture (Kaliningrad region, Russia). p. 113. ISBN 978-5-
903920-26-6.
External links
Farlang many full text historical references on Amber Theophrastus, George Frederick Kunz, and special
on Baltic amber.
IPS Publications on amber inclusions International Paleoentomological Society: Scientific Articles on
amber and its inclusions
Webmineral on Amber Physical properties and mineralogical information
Mindat Amber Image and locality information on amber
NY Times 40 million year old extinct bee in Dominican amber